Whether sitting on a congressional sub-committee, giving a press conference, asking questions of a witness before congress, being accused of any kind of wrongdoing (which she is very good at) or being asked pointed questions by a reporter, Nancy Pelosi has perfected the art of the stupid look.

Whether it is a show or it just comes natural, you will have to be the judge of that.

Was there ever a chance that the Congressional Super Committee tasked with finding cuts of some $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years would actually succeed? Now that they have almost officially failed in their impossible task and automatic budget cuts will take place (at least they are supposed to), let’s look at why this group of 6 Senators and 6 Representatives, 3 from each house and each party, were doomed to fail from the start (One reason was that John Kerry was a member to start with).

If 100 Senators and 435 Representatives could not agree on what to cut and how much to cut from the Federal deficit in the next 10 years during the debt ceiling budget battle of 2011, how could 6 members of each house assume they would succeed? And how could John Kerry even be taken seriously as a member of this committee when he has never seen a tax he didn’t like and he has made a career out of always blaming someone else (Kerry probably has no idea what the statement “the buck stops here” means) other than himself for the nation’s woes. Kerry, by the way (as the richest member of the Senate), may be one of the biggest players in the insider trading scandal in congress.

The main reason none of this silly positioning in the media and ridiculous debate amongst the entire Congress and within the Super Committee would ever succeed is that there are 2 fundamentally different ideals to grapple with on how public money should be raised and spent. One group, the Democrats, treat all public monies as though it belongs to no one and they spend it like the spigot of endless cash will never run out (they don’t treat it as their money because no one would be as irresponsible with their money as Democrats are with public money). And when they want to finance more programs that in reality do nothing more than buy votes, they think they can just demand the American public or business, both small and large, empty their pockets of more of the money they earned.

While Republicans are not too far behind in their love of pork barrel spending and buying votes, at least some understand that money being spent (actually overspent) in Washington does not belong to them. They realize it comes from the hands of people who work for it. Amazingly, many of the fiscally responsible Republicans voted for The Budget Control Act of 2011 even though it did nothing to substantially control actual spending. With the projected federal deficit to be $13 trillion over the next 10 years, the mere $1.5 trillion (on top of the miniscule $917 billion reduced by the full Congress) members of the Super Committee had to find and cut were nothing less than a complete joke.

Understand that when the Congressional Budget Office projects a $13 trillion deficit for the next 10 years, cuts of slightly over $2.4 trillion over that same time means our government will still spend some $1 trillion more than it takes in every year for the next 10 years! Obviously, there are no real cuts to begin with. When a trauma patient in the emergency room is hemorrhaging blood and is in danger of losing their life, doctors are not interested in reducing the blood flow by just a few drops, they want to completely stop it. That is the only way to save the patient’s life. However, very few of our legislators seem to realize this. Instead, they vote for something that makes them look good in the media while continuing to burn through cash that they aren’t replacing at the rate of $3.99 billion a day when you include interest.

The simple heart of the matter when it comes to getting the government budget under control is that Congress has to stop spending money they don’t have. We don’t need to pontificate on this point any further, do university studies, create Super Committees, have the President wag his finger and lecture republicans, interview Ivy League professors and economists on CNBC, or any of the other foolish steps that take the spotlight off the issue of spending more than you take in.

Individuals, corporations, Wall Street bankers, senior citizens, welfare recipients, farmers and everyone else grabbing from the government trough unjustly and the Democrats and Republicans that are their suppliers, will simply have to be told no, you aren’t getting any more money or any more increases from the government because we don’t have it. The money has run out.

It’s the money stupid, we’re out of it. You don’t need any more of it, you need to stop spending it.